October 13, 2017

Review: Lufthansa Business Class 747-8 Boston-Frankfurt

I recently booked a free Lufthansa Business Class flight from Boston-Frankfurt on a Boeing 747-8. Before getting on my flight, I spent about an hour eating and relaxing at the new Lufthansa Business Class lounge in Boston. Here’s what the flight was like:

Booking

I booked this flight using 70,000 United miles along with a $42.70 charge for taxes and fees. I charged the $42.70 to my Platinum Card from American Express. The platinum card comes with $200 in annual airline fee credits. While this doesn’t normally cover award ticket surcharges, the charge was low enough in this case that AMEX presumably thought it was some other incidental airline fee and issued me a statement credit. This means the final cost of my ticket came to $0!

You can also book this one-way award with 55,000 Air Canada Aeroplan miles or 55,500 Lufthansa miles. However, both those programs typically charge a few hundred dollars in taxes and fees for award tickets.

Seats

Lufthansa Business Class seats are laid out in a 2-2-2 configuration. I was traveling alone so I booked seat 5G (one of the two center seats). The center seats are ideal for solo travelers because they both have direct aisle access. If you have a window seat when traveling alone, you’ll have to climb over the stranger to get out.

These seats don’t have much storage space. There’s two small compartment under the TV monitor. It was enough to hold a magazine, iPad, book, and earphones just fine. There’s another small space (enough to fit a phone) under the central armrest. The central console also has two power adapters.

Lufthansa’s Business Class seats are fully lie-flat and turn into an excellent bed for overnight rest. Each seat comes with a pillow and blanket. I borrowed the unused pillow from the empty seat next to me to double up.

In Flight Entertainment

The IFE screen is decent but really nothing special. Lufthansa’s Business Class is starting to get dated and is due for a refresh in 2020. One cool thing about the monitors is that they are adjustable. Meaning you can pull them in and out and left and right. The IFE had a wide selection of movies and shows available to watch.

The central console contains Bose headsets and a remote to control the IFE. The system was fairly responsive to remote commands which was great, but I think I was clicking through too fast as it froze and had to be restarted at one point.

Amenities & Wi-Fi

I found these dark and light grey BREE amenity kits. Lufthansa must have just recently changed these as they used to be a light grey pouch shaped kit. They contained socks, an eye mask, toothbrush, tooth paste, headphone covers, earplugs, moisturizer, and lip balm. The contents of the amenity kit were fine, but wow the kit itself is just ugly.

This was the Wi-Fi pricing on this flight. €17 for the full flight is about the same as other airlines charge. I didn’t use the Wi-Fi on this flight so I can’t comment about its speed. But I have purchased Lufthansa Wi-Fi on previous flights and it’s worked fine every time.

Dining

Meal service began about an hour after takeoff. We started off dinner with almonds. We had three choices for the appetizer course-Smoked Scallop, Shrimp, and Salmond appetizer, Chicken Spring Roll appetizer, or Honey Poached Mushroom Salad with Hazelnuts and Mozzarella appetizer.

I chose the Chicken Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce. They were delicious but cutting them was difficult. The roll exterior was firm and not conducive to cutting, so it turned into a mess by the time it made it to my mouth. It tasted great though!

Next up was the seasonal salad. I’m not a huge fan of salad. As far as salad goes, this was perfectly average.

We had three choices for the entrée- Seared Beef Fillet, Lemon Braised Atlantic Seabass, or Pumpkin Ravioli. I had the beef fillet. The sauce, toppings, and asparagus all worked well together. The asparagus was a tad flimsy for my liking and the beef was well-done. It was perfectly fine by airline food standards, but there’s not much flavor left in the meat when it’s well-done.

Our dessert options were a cheese plate, chocolate ice cream, or fresh fruit. I was trying to be healthy so I ordered the fruit.

That was it for dinner. The flight attendants woke us up about 1hour 30minutes before landing for breakfast. Breakfast consisted of Orange Juice, Tea, Coffee, Fresh Fruit, Strawberry Yogurt, Turkey Breast, Salami, Swiss Emmental Cheese, Cream Cheese, and Bread. I wasn’t hungry so I didn’t order anything and went back to sleep.

Service

Service on this flight was great. The flight attendants were friendly throughout the trip. They offered to take photos of me when they saw I was photographing everything. My FA was also happy to take photos of me several times throughout the flight. Shortly after boarding ended, the FA came over to solo passengers who had seatmates and told them they were welcome to spread out to empty rows if they wanted more privacy. They were very approachable and wanted to make the flight a positive one for passengers.

Overall Rating

Here’s my overall rating of the flying experience broken down by category:

Seats- 8/10

In Flight Entertainment- 7/10

Amenities- 4/5

Wi-Fi- 5/5

Dining- 7/10

Service- 8/10

Departure/Arrival Timeliness- 4/5

Cumulative Ranking: 7.8/10

Lufthansa is my favorite airline and the one I fly most. The best thing about Lufthansa is its consistency. They have nearly identical seats throughout their fleet, very similar food offerings, and consistently good service. They’re also the largest airline in Europe and have plenty of convenient connecting flights all around the world.

That said, Lufthansa’s Business Class seats are starting to fall behind the competition. Heck, even United is starting roll out 1-2-1 seating, albeit at a glacially slow pace. We’ll have to wait till 2020 to see Lufthansa’s new Business Class. I expect nothing but the best from Germany’s flag carrier.

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